He reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped onto the strewn beach, stumbling on a stone, his progress from then on limited to lurches and sudden fits of thrown balance. It was not that he ignored what was at his feet. The mist wasn’t that dense, but his eyes had been instructed to disregard anything set in his path and keep themselves alert for any least object the sea might have decided was no longer of interest to itself. He was foolish enough—crazed might be the better word—to hope he could find a less primitive entity than salted kelp. He was foolish enough to expect that there at his feet might be a shred of clothing, the cap maybe, or the saddest prize of all, the wounded skull where the fish might have made their home. Anything. Anything at all that he might hold long enough for him to know that there, in his hand, was some remnant of the lost boy. He wanted to hold whatever it might be long enough to feel he had said the final farewell he had saved for the moment he would bury the youth in the soil of Kinvara.
Should he find anything, words might come to him. He would say them, wait for the tide, then return to the grave what had been given by the sea. Declan asked no more. He wanted to be a participant. He wanted to be included in the obsequies. Michael should not have been sent to this lasting rest either in Kinvara or in the sea without some sign, some gesture, some final permission to take leave of this world, to know of Declan’s surrender of the boy to the peace that only the grave can give.
Driftwood there was in abundance, some pieces smoothed, polished clean, others, more recent, rough and splintered, torn loose from a sunken boat and sent back to a world that no longer had any use for it. Kelp and weed, frothing as if they were a strung series of mouths gone mad, marked the farthest reach of the receded tide. There were plastic bottles, none capable of offering the final fulfillment of beach glass, its magical colors rivaling the panes set into church windows at a time when it had been thought that faith and glory were one and inseparable. He did find a shoe, but it wasn’t Michael’s. He didn’t even bother to pick it up, much less look for its mate.
He stopped and turned to face the sea. The swelling waves had given him nothing he had sought. He would not complain. The sea was the sea. To rage against it defined absurdity.
The tide had turned again. The beach was narrowing. The mist was being drawn up into the low clouds above. Declan turned to his right and gave one last look at the stretch of beach ahead. Whatever it might hold would have to wait for another time. For an instant the thought came to him that he would continue his search, that the incoming tide would continue its advance at whatever speed it preferred. He would go on. The tide would rise. It would reach the foot of the cliff, and it would continue to rise. Declan’s feet, his ankles, calves and thighs, his chest, his shoulders, neck and head would accept the water’s arrival, and still he would continue on. He would be drawn into Michael’s grave, where he would find the boy waiting, shifting slightly as the swells moved overhead. He would be as he had been when Declan had placed him among Kitty McCloud’s cabbages.
The water had come closer. The thought, the intent to seek further, passed on. Declan would go no nearer to where the boy would be. He would simply endure—and give thanks that his grief would never end. There would be other forays, other gleanings, perhaps a finding.
On the beach, about ten feet from the bottom of the stairs, tipped up against a stone, was a book, opened. He stooped and picked it up. Most of the pages were stuck together, sodden, suggesting a long immersion. His nostrils took in the full salt scent the book released as, with limited success, he tried to flip his way through. It was as though the words had been set down not in print or even in ink, but were the product of tears fallen one by one onto a piece of paper and then gathered together to become a book. That the book should be drenched seemed only right. Declan read the words on the title page: The Houseof Mirth. “By Edith Wharton.”
It was from the shelves of Kitty McCloud. That much he knew, a book that might require one of her famous “corrections.” Would he restore it to Miss McCloud? That it had come from Michael’s grave was a claim he could rightly make for himself. But of what interest was it? Could the sea possibly exchange it for something more intimate? The baseball cap, for instance.
He would return the book to Kitty. It was hers, not his, nor was it Michael’s. Let the cap come. That he would accept. Nothing less.
4
The cross-eyed pig screamed and squealed as if it were being tormented by a thousand pig demons—even though it was merely being encouraged to walk the ramp onto Lolly and Aaron’s truck for transport to Castle Kissane. Head raised, ears pulled straight back, it entreated whichever deities might be attentive to the lamentations of a pig to take pity on its plight, honor its dignity, and smite its tormentors. In partial answer to its prayer, it was awarded new modulations: a more varied pitch and an increase in decibel levels that reached the limits of human hearing.
Aaron gave its hams another slap. The pig, believing itself a horse, reared on its hind legs and would, if it could, have trampled Aaron with its cloven hoofs. “Tell it it’s going back to the castle, not to the slaughterhouse,” he told his wife.
“I did tell it. It won’t listen.”
“I can’t hear. It’s making too much noise.”
Lolly, fortunately, had a history of enjoying confusion and calamity, an idiosyncrasy that was a help with the situation now. Adding her happy laughter to the pig’s pleadings, she climbed the ramp onto the bed of the truck. After she’d gone as far as the back of the cab, she turned and called out to her husband, “Come on up.”
“What?”
Lolly mouthed rather than spoke the words.
Aaron understood. “Why?” he yelled.
Lolly made the appropriate gestures, inviting him to join her. He climbed the ramp. As soon as he was aboard, Lolly kicked away the ramp and put in place the tailgate that fenced the bed of the truck. The pig became silent.
“Face the other way,” Lolly said. “And come back here.” She returned to the far end.
Aaron followed. “What are we doing?”
“We’re letting the pig know we’re going without her and leaving her behind.”
“We are?”
“We’re pretending. Surely you know how to pretend.”
“I guess so.”
“Then pretend.”
Aaron, with a nonchalance so fake even a pig couldn’t accept it, looked to his left, then to his right, then up at the sky.
“You’re not pretending. You’re acting. Pretend for real. Pigs aren’t stupid, you know.”
Aaron decided to do nothing, an action at which he was more than particularly adept. The pig, moving slowly onto the fallen ramp, came to the end of the truck and snorted softly. Without moving her lips, Lolly said to Aaron, “Don’t do anything. Let her beg just a bit more to make sure she got the message.”
Aaron stood at his wife’s side, trying with all his might to clear his mind of all the thoughts racing through it, the least of which would force from him some gesture, some shifting of his feet, some stretching of his neck. It was not easy for him to pretend upon demand.
After the pig had repeated its soft snortings three times, Lolly, in mercy, removed the tailgate, jumped down, replaced the ramp, and watched as the pig trotted aboard. It went directly to Aaron and rubbed its ringed snout against his pants leg. “You’ll have to stay there with her. I don’t want her to think she’s been tricked,” said Lolly. She shoved the ramp up onto the truck bed, told Aaron to replace the tailgate, then went around and climbed into the cab. Smiling widely, she waved through the rearview window, thumped twice against the back of the cab, and drove off to Castle Kissane.
Until now, neither Lolly nor Aaron had been able to figure out what to do with this particular pig. It seemed to be subject to fits, but the summoned veterinarian could find nothing wrong. Various tests validated his prognosis. For the inexplicable episodes of screeching and screaming, no explanation presented itself. And when it repeatedly butted its
formidable head against the fences of the penned area, desperate to be set loose, there were fears that it would damage itself, to say nothing of the pen. Also, it would shriek, snout raised skyward, to ward off any other pig that might come too close, creating around itself an impenetrable barrier that none of the other pigs would dare to violate. Intermittent periods of repose seemed more the result of exhaustion than the arrival of some newfound serenity.
This behavior could not continue. It agitated the entire herd. Loss of appetite was the most disturbing symptom. Here, too, the veterinarian could offer nothing but a shake of his head. But if a pig doesn’t eat, it doesn’t fatten. And if it doesn’t fatten, then its sole purpose for being a pig is nullified. A trim and slender pig is not what nature had in mind when the species evolved to its present preferred state: gross and repellent. Slender and cuddly was not an acceptable alternative.
To isolate the pig achieved nothing. The farm’s acreage, limited as it was, failed to provide a place that would enable the animal to be out of earshot not only of the herd but of Lolly and Aaron themselves,—not to mention their neighbors. Slaughter was the only solution. This pig, after all, had once been chosen from among the entire herd for such a fate. Its eviscerated, spitted, and roasted carcass had been the intended centerpiece of a communal celebration, a general rejoicing justified by Aaron’s aunt Kitty and her husband’s having taken possession of Castle Kissane, a bit of real estate distinguished more by its want of lordly proportion than any claim to an imposing dynamic. A castle, however, is still a castle, with a dank dungeon as well as a great hall crowned with an iron chandelier that could accommodate a hundred candles.
The chosen pig, identified by its crossed eyes—the very pig now being carted back to Castle Kissane—had been granted a reprieve by a mistaken last-minute substitution. Another pig had been sent to the spit in its place. Since the sacrificed animal had a somewhat special history, including its unearthing of a skeleton and the eventual pairing of Kitty as well as Kieran, Lolly and Aaron, the loss prompted a revulsion against the spared beast. (That Kitty had made the mistaken substitution was also a factor.) The living animal was forthwith returned to Lolly and Aaron.
But the pig now being returned was no longer the same pig they had chosen for the feast. At the time, it had been as fat as the overstuffed sausage its lesser parts would one day become. Its temperament had been exuberant but agreeable, with no suggestion of rebellion. Now it had become a malcontent, forever outraged by some unknowable deprivation (unless, of course, its discontent derived from having been denied the honor of being spitted and roasted to a crisp succulence and devoured pitilessly by the ravening guests).
That this could be a legitimate complaint, no one would deny, but so excessive was the pig’s distress that all sympathy was withheld. The animal must now either calm down or be hauled off to the slaughterhouse, fattened or not fattened. Or, worse, sold to what was known as “intensive,” a fate Lolly would never allow for any Irish pig. Her animals were the beneficiary of her insistence that she would be a swineherd if she so chose, even if she were the last independent pig person in all of Ireland. She was determined not to relinquish her calling. In her family, swine-herding reached back to the days of Queen Maeve herself. Never would any pig of hers be confined to an overcrowded area, there to be mechanically fed, with no human hand to give it a slap, no befouled boot to give it a kick. Better the butcher than “intensive.”
But before Lolly could say the words aloud—which would make them irrevocable, since she was never known to change her mind—her American husband had made a proposal of his own. They would return the animal to Kitty and Kieran. They were the ones responsible for its current plight. It was at Castle Kissane that the tragic exchange had taken place. It seemed only fair that they should be made to deal with the consequences of their error. Let them suffer the loss of sleep, let them hear the constant cries, let them try what consolations they might. If they didn’t want to fatten it, well, that would be their decision, not Lolly’s or Aaron’s. There would be nothing to trouble their conscience.
When the truck reached the castle, Aaron saw Kitty weeding the vegetable patch near the courtyard. As the truck came to a halt, his aunt dusted her hands against her faded jeans and, seeing Aaron in the back of the truck with the pig, called out, “Which one has come to stay? The man or the pig?”
Lolly got out of the cab. “Take your choice.”
“The one’s too skinny. I’ll take the fatter one, even if it’s a bit skinnier than I remembered it.”
Aaron, an American by birth and not yet accustomed to Irish ways, all but sighed at this display of what he had come to accept as Kerry wit. He removed the tailgate and shoved the ramp into place. He then made the mistake of giving the pig an obligatory slap. The full force of its earlier lament was given new voice. The stubborn refusal to cooperate returned with added resolve. It rooted itself to the bed of the truck, daring one and all to infringe upon its right to be intractable.
Aaron walked down the ramp, went to his aunt, and mouthed his hello. She in turn mouthed hers, then called out to Lolly loud enough to best the noise of the pig’s complaints, “Is this what you’re leaving us? I’ll take the skinny one after all.”
Aaron walked over to pretend—his recently acquired expertise—an interest in the garden, thereby distancing himself from the pig. Because he was in Ireland and not America, he allowed himself to engage in some specious reasoning: A pig was woman’s work. Not only was it a tradition that the women of the house looked after the animals, but it was a known fact that women had an instinctive sense when it came to understanding nurture. Lolly had known how to get the pig onto the truck. Aaron, therefore, felt it was perfectly permissible that she dip down into her instincts and retrieve the one unfailing gesture that would bring a docile and amiable sow from the bed of their truck onto the castle grounds. It was no concern of his.
Lolly, unable to abbreviate the witty exchange, yelled back to Kitty, “They’re both skinny. The pig came back to us fat, but it hasn’t eaten since. With all the ructions it’s been raising, we’d take it to the butcher in a minute, but we can’t until it’s put on a bit more bacon. If you and Kieran would just make it more eligible, we’d be obliged.”
At a fair remove from the courtyard chaos, Aaron walked around the periphery of the garden, the fresh greens promising vegetables he couldn’t identify. It was into cabbages that the dead Declan had been deposited. Aaron couldn’t help wondering what might lie beneath the soil he was stepping on now. The castle had a dungeon. Was it into this ground that its occupants had been released? The fact that he and Lolly had put a ring through the delivered pig’s snout would at least prevent it from unearthing yet another heap of bones, thereby repeating the havoc Declan Tovey had brought with him from the grave more than a year ago.
As he stood at the far end of the garden near a mound of uprooted weeds, Aaron looked back at his wife, his aunt, and the pig. To his surprise, things seemed somewhat under control. The pig was off the truck and sticking its snout through the rail of the handsomely crafted pen Kieran had built for it during its previous stay. If Aaron interpreted the action rightly, the pig was asking to be put back where it had lived for that brief time before it was the be the star attraction at the castle feast. That it wanted to be penned up was further proof of its derangement. Should they consider having the sow tested for Mad Pig Disease? The animal was now in the custody of Kitty and Kieran. She was their problem.
Now that the pig was quiescent, Aaron made his way back to his waiting wife. He stopped when he saw entering the courtyard a small, rattletrap truck, nearly on the verge of falling apart completely. It was obviously having a fit—one that might prove fatal if the motor wasn’t cut off within seconds. The motor was cut. A man got out. Aaron saw his wife take two steps back at the sight of him. His aunt took one step forward. The man hadn’t moved away from the truck, suggesting this was not meant to be a prolonged encounter. He had even kept his ha
nd on the door, possibly to expedite a quick getaway should that prove advisable. With the other hand he was holding a book.
The man’s pants, coat, and cap replicated almost exactly the clothing worn by the aforementioned unearthed skeleton—before it had been given improved attire more worthy of the laying out, including Aaron’s last good shirt. Could this be the man Lolly had seen in Caherciveen and mistaken for Declan Tovey? Aaron snorted with pleased relief. The mystery was solved. It was the similar clothing that had caused the mistaken identity.
Lolly turned and went quickly to the cab of their own truck, opened the door, reached in, and pulled out what he knew to be a fresh ham wrapped in yesterday’s Irish Times, brought to thank (that is, to bribe) Kitty and Kieran for relieving them of the impossible pig.
“Here’s the ham I promised,” she called out, a needless explanation. The man’s arrival had obviously unsettled her—which was understandable. Even Aaron, who had never seen Declan Tovey, could agree to a resemblance to what had been described. Wielding the ham in her hand like a primitive club, Lolly continued to explain herself. “I’ll put it in your kitch—I mean your scullery.” She ran to the door leading into the great hall, entered, and neglected to close the door behind her.
At first, Aaron thought his first responsibility was to check on his wife. He would explain, patiently, what was happening. He was certain that Lolly would be grateful for the correction of her misidentification. Curiosity, however, got the better of him. Before going to his wife, he would accumulate more information, enough to settle the issue once and for all. This must be a Tovey relation newly come into these parts. Or, more likely, someone from the same gene pool as the departed—a possibility he’d already suggested. Lolly would be uncharacteristically shamed to have thought they were being visited by the risen dead, a spirit too impatient to wait for the final trump.
The Pig Goes to Hog Heaven Page 5
